Walter Russell Mead, a political historian at Bard College in New York compares Trump to a composite of presidents Andrew Jackson, Franklin Delano Roosevelt and Ronald Reagan (see video "Thoughts on Trump"). What Mead sees in Trump is Jackson's fiery nationalist "anger", Roosevelt's allowing his cabinet and department heads to fight it out with him as "arbiter" and Reagan's supply-side economics. But academics are particularly unsuited to understand someone coming from the business world, let alone the brutal municipal politics of real estate development.
It is probably better to compare Trump to the ideal typical role of a real estate developer than any past presidents; although if one is going to make such a comparison Teddy Roosevelt would be more apropos. And in reverse, Trump is no Valentinian I, Aaron Burr, or Robert Moses.
Trump the Developer
Having dealt with many developers in my real estate career, as well as meeting billionaire developers Eli Broad and Ed Roski and renting a rental home to an unnamed billionaire, the typical stereotype is that they are "greedy", "con artists", "bulldozers", or conversely, "creative", "entrepreneur", "risk takers", and "visionary".
Sociologists have found the opposite, which I would confirm such from my experience: most developers are members of a community and if they are crooks that reputation will ruin them in the marketplace and in the brutal world of municipal politics. Sociologists have found that developers are risk averse, not innovators, rely on connections, must learn how to use politicians to their advantage and please the politician's constituency, distrust the so-called 'wisdom of crowds' and stock markets, know the time value of money because real estate markets are cyclical, rely on written contracts not handshakes or sweetheart deals, and sometimes have to trust their instincts. Trump had to learn to ask as many people as possible about the location of a proposed project (especially cab drivers and women).
For developers, bombast, bluster and shocking remarks only works at the bargaining table or when supervising construction, not at City Hall or when marketing homes or casinos or hiring mostly women property managers.
One particular role behavior: developers behave differently if they are selling or buying. If selling they often start out with a high price and end up agreeing to a much lower price to get the buyer to think they are ending up with a good deal. This is shown in Trump's claiming he is going to build a wall, adopt trade tariffs, deport immigrants, etc. Those are all opening gambits in bargaining, although Trump's opponents interpret such literally in order to stigmatize him as "authoritarian" or "Mussolini" or some other stigma.
Mead states: "Nobody thinks he is going to build a wall, let alone get Mexico to build it" (generating laughter and derision by audiences). But what Trump is apparently referring to is stopping the $19 to $39 billion drug traffic across the Mexican border. Mexico would mostly benefit from this because it would dry up money from drug warlords as well as reducing violent crime in Chicago.
Trump Talk
Despite claims that Trump is a bully-izing braggadocio, in the 1980s he was described as a "calm rational, even modest man who showed little emotion or passion as he described in technical detail the reasoning behind his building projects and defended them against criticism, relying on factual, technical arguments". He was known as an optimist who "believed in New York".
How anyone could take seriously and out of context Trump's words spoken on an unscripted reality TV show as a PAID actor meant to generate ratings by saying outlandish things? Such out of context stories are nothing but urban media myths and vicious gossip.
Gossip by children, politicians and media can be cruel. But as ethicist Dennis Prager reminds us, such gossip is against Judeo-Christian law and mores. But no ethical leader, religious or secular, brought up that Trump's words spoken on "Access Hollywood" were those of a paid actor and taken out of context. Why? Is this moral, no matter what vulgar words Trump spoke? Who broke ethical codes, Trump or those who took the "Access Hollywood" story as evidence of Trump's character to use it against him for infotainment and political mudslinging?
Trump did use vulgar words to bust speech codes in an attempt to reform political correctness. But as Victor Davis Hanson has observed, "civility" is a scam of "civility for me but not for thee". And this dodges the question of which is the "lesser evil": institutionalized politically correct speech codes or Trump's words meant to bust open PC as a social and legal norm along with their accompanying entitlements?
Trump's speech is not hateful but entertainingly humorous and reminds me of George Orwell's "Funny, But Not Vulgar":
"It would seem that you cannot be funny without being vulgar, that is, vulgar by the standards of the people at whom English humorous writing in our own day seems mostly to be aimed. For it is not only sex that is "vulgar". So are death, childbirth and poverty, the other three subjects upon which the best music-hall humor turns. And respect for the intellect and strong political feeling, if not actually vulgar, are looked upon as being in doubtful taste. You cannot be really funny if your main aim is to flatter the comfortable classes: it means leaving out too much. To be funny, indeed, you have got to be serious".
If anything, Trump was a non-populist who used sarcasm for most of his campaign.
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Trump's Eminent Domain Myth
Trump is often wrongly faulted for taking advantage of a poor widow by threatening to use eminent domain to take her house for a parking lot. Nothing could be further from the truth. Trump offered Vera Coking four times the market value for a rooming house she owned, but did not live in, on commercial zoned land adjacent to one of his casinos; and life time free occupancy in one of his luxury condos if she voluntarily sold her property. She refused and the city eventually was denied the use of eminent domain anyway. Twenty years later, Coker was forced to sell her property by foreclosure for half of what Trump had offered her; and Trump lost his casino in bankruptcy. If this says anything, it is that Trump is a generous man and follows the Judeo-Christian ethic of not taking advantage of widows.
Media Phantasma
Trump is no saint but neither is he an autocratic Robert Moses who built most of the public works in New York as its Parks Commissioner by using corrupt and overbearing means such as bulldozing homes on Long Island instead of using eminent domain and setting up his own slush funds outside of the democratic process of government (just as Hillary has done). Trump has done neither.
Trump is no "angry" Andrew Jackson militarist; no Roosevelt who interned Japanese Americans, opposed businessman Wendell Willkie and was propped up by technocrat Vice President Henry Wallace; and no Ronald Reagan union leader and actor turned supply sider who was a great president but built nothing and employed no one.
On the political Left Trump has a stigma, on the Right charisma but mostly he is a phantasma existing in media perception only. Thus, we don't know what kind of President Trump will be. That is probably because most developers don't want you to know where they are coming from before they play their hand. We need a more realist, and less stigmatizing, more human image of Trump starting from he is a real estate developer and grand bargainer who is an iconic persona of a culture of entrepreneurship and a "prosperity gospel" proponent. And he is on our side of the bargaining table.
Wayne has previously written for The American Thinker, Real Clear Politics (Religion), Calwatchdog.com, MasterResource.com (free market energy website) and Fox & Hounds (California politics).
